Why it works: Sugar and pear are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Canned Pears
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the syrup
Peel, halve, and core the pears.
In a pot, combine 2 cups of sugar and 4 cups of water to make a syrup.
Bring the syrup to a boil.
Cook and can the pears
Add enough pears for 2 quart cans and boil until tender.
Place the pears in the cans and pour the hot syrup over them.
Seal the cans immediately.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,079 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pears
- Form the fruit itself, softening into tender pieces when boiled in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and adds body, and helps preserve the fruit's flavor and texture.
The step that matters
Seal the cans immediately. Filling with hot pears and syrup and sealing at once lets the contents cool and contract, drawing air out and creating a vacuum seal. Delay lets air in, which can weaken the seal and spoil the fruit.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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